The Blue Castle Page 8

  "We must be guided by developments," said Uncle Benjamin. "It is"--solemnly--"easier to scramble eggs than unscramble them. Of course--if she becomes violent."

  Uncle James consulted Dr. Ambrose Marsh. Dr. Ambrose Marsh approved their decision. He pointed out to irate Uncle James--who would have liked to lock Valancy up somewhere, out of hand--that Valancy had not, as yet, really done or said anything that could be constructed as proof of lunacy--and without proof you cannot lock people up in this degenerate age. Nothing that Uncle James had reported seemed very alarming to Dr. Marsh, who put up his hand to conceal a smile several times. But then he himself was not a Stirling. And he knew very little about the old Valancy. Uncle James stalked out and drove back to Deerwood, thinking that Ambrose Marsh wasn't much of a doctor, after all, and that Adelaide Stirling might have done better for herself.

  CHAPTER 14

  Life cannot stop because tragedy enters it. Meals must be made ready though a son dies and porches must be repaired even if your only daughter is going out of her mind. Mrs. Frederick, in her systematic way, had long ago appointed the second week in June for the repairing of the front porch, the roof of which was sagging dangerously. Roaring Abel had been engaged to do it many moons before and Roaring Abel promptly appeared on the morning of the first day of the second week, and fell to work. Of course he was drunk. Roaring Abel was never anything but drunk. But he was only in the first stage, which made him talkative and genial. The odor of whisky on his breath nearly drove Mrs. Frederick and Cousin Stickles wild at dinner. Even Valancy, with all her emancipation, did not like it. But she liked Abel and she liked his vivid, eloquent talk, and after she washed the dinner dishes she went out and sat on the steps and talked to him.

  Mrs. Frederick and Cousin Stickles thought it a terrible proceeding, but what could they do? Valancy only smiled mockingly at them when they called her in, and did not go. It was so easy to defy once you got started. The first step was the only one that really counted. They were both afraid to say anything more to her lest she might make a scene before Roaring Abel, who would spread it all over the country with his own characteristic comments and exaggerations. It was too cold a day, in spite of the June sunshine, for Mrs. Frederick to sit at the dining room window and listen to what was said. She had to shut the window and Valancy and Roaring Abel had their talk to themselves. But if Mrs. Frederick had known what the outcome of that talk was to be she would have prevented it, if the porch was never repaired.

  Valancy sat on the steps, defiant of the chill breeze of this cold June which had made Aunt Isabel aver the seasons were changing. She did not care whether she caught a cold or not. It was delightful to sit there in that cold, beautiful, fragrant world and feel free. She filled her lungs with the clean, lovely wind and held out her arms to it and let it tear her hair to pieces while she listened to Roaring Abel, who told her his troubles between intervals of hammering gaily in time to his Scottish songs. Valancy liked to hear him. Every stroke of his hammer fell true to the note.

  Old Abel Gay, in spite of his seventy years, was handsome still, in a stately, patriarchal manner. His tremendous beard, falling down over his blue flannel shirt, was still a flaming, untouched red, though his shock of hair was white as snow, and his eyes were a fiery, youthful blue. His enormous, reddish-white eyebrows were more like moustaches than eyebrows. Perhaps this was why he always kept his upper lip scrupulously shaved. His cheeks were red and his nose ought to have been, but wasn't. It was a fine, upstanding, aquiline nose, such as the noblest Roman of them all might have rejoiced in. Abel was six feet two in his stockings, broad-shouldered, lean-hipped. In his youth he had been a famous lover, finding all women too charming to bind himself to one. His years had been a wild, colorful panorama of follies and adventures, gallantries, fortunes and misfortunes. He had been forty-five before he married--a pretty slip of a girl whom his goings-on killed in a few years. Abel was piously drunk at her funeral and insisted on repeating the fifty-fifth chapter of Isaiah--Abel knew most of the Bible and all the Psalms by heart--while the minister, whom he disliked, prayed or tried to pray. Thereafter his house was run by an untidy old cousin who cooked his meals and kept things going after a fashion. In this unpromising environment little Cecilia Gay had grown up.

  Valancy had known "Cissy Gay" fairly well in the democracy of the public school, though Cissy had been three years younger than she. After they left school their paths diverged and she had seen nothing of her. Old Abel was a Presbyterian. That is, he got a Presbyterian preacher to marry him, baptize his child and bury his wife; and he knew more about Presbyterian theology than most ministers which made him a terror to them in arguments. But Roaring Abel never went to church. Every Presbyterian minister who had been in Deerwood had tried his hand--once--at reforming Roaring Abel. But he had not been pestered of late. Rev. Mr. Bently had been in Deerwood for eight years, but he had not sought out Roaring Abel since the first three months of his pastorate. He had called on Roaring Abel then and found him in the theological stage of drunkenness--which always followed the sentimental maudlin one, and preceded the roaring, blasphemous one. The eloquently prayerful one, in which he realized himself temporarily and intensely as a sinner in the hands of an angry God, was the final one. Abel never went beyond it. He generally fell asleep on his knees and awakened sober, but he had never been "dead drunk" in his life. He told Mr. Bently that he was a sound Presbyterian and sure of his election. He had no sins--that he knew of--to repent of.

  "Have you never done anything in your life that you are sorry for?" asked Mr. Bently.

  Roaring Abel scratched his bushy white head and pretended to reflect.

  "Well, yes," he said finally. "There were some women I might have kissed and didn't. I've always been sorry for that."

  Mr. Bently went out and went home.

  Abel had seen that Cissy was properly baptized--jovially drunk at the same time himself. He made her go to church and Sunday School regularly. The church people took her up and she was in turn a member of the Mission Band, the Girls' Guild, and the Young Women's Missionary Society. She was a faithful, unobtrusive, sincere, little worker. Everybody liked Cissy Gay and was sorry for her. She was so modest and sensitive and pretty in that delicate, elusive fashion of beauty which fades so quickly if life is not kept in it by love and tenderness. But then liking and pity did not prevent them from tearing her in pieces like hungry cats when the catastrophe came. Four years previously Cissy Gay had gone up to a Muskoka hotel as a summer waitress. And when she had come back in the fall she was a changed creature. She hid herself away and went nowhere. The reason soon leaked out and scandal raged. That winter Cissy's baby was born. Nobody ever knew who the father was. Cecily kept her poor pale lips tightly locked on her sorry secret. Nobody dared ask Roaring Abel any questions about it. Rumor and surmise laid the guilt at Barney Snaith's door because diligent inquiry among the other maids at the hotel revealed the fact that nobody there had ever seen Cissy Gay "with a fellow." She had "kept herself to herself" they said, rather resentfully. "Too good for our dances. And now look!"

  The baby had lived for a year. After its death Cissy faded away. Two years ago Dr. Marsh had given her only six months to live--her lungs were hopelessly diseased. But she was still alive. Nobody went to see her. Women would not go to Roaring Abel's house. Mr. Bently had gone once, when he knew Abel was away, but the dreadful old creature who was scrubbing the kitchen floor told him Cissy wouldn't see anyone. The old cousin had died and Roaring Abel had had two or three disreputable housekeepers--the only kind who could be prevailed on to go to a house where a girl was dying of consumption. But the last one had left and Roaring Abel had now no one to wait on Cissy and "do" for him. This was the burden of his plaint to Valancy and he condemned the "hypocrites" of Deerwood and its surrounding communities with some rich, meaty oaths that happened to reach Cousin Stickles' ears as she passed through the hall and nearly finished the poor lady. Was Valancy listening to that?

  Valancy hard
ly noticed the profanity. Her attention was focused on the horrible thought of poor, unhappy, disgraced little Cissy Gay, ill and helpless in that forlorn old house out on the Mistawis road, without a soul to help or comfort her. And this in a nominally Christian community in the year of grace nineteen and some odd!

  "Do you mean to say that Cissy is all alone there now, with nobody to do anything for her--nobody?"

  "Oh, she can move about a bit and get a bite and sup when she wants it. But she can't work. It's d--d hard for a man to work hard all day and go home at night tired and hungry and cook his own meals. Sometimes I'm sorry I kicked old Rachel Edwards out." Abel described Rachel picturesquely.

  "Her face looked as if it had worn out a hundred bodies. And she moped. Talk about temper! Temper's nothing to moping. She was too slow to catch worms, and dirty--d--d dirty. I ain't unreasonable--I know a man has to eat his peck before he dies--but she went over the limit. What d'ye sp'ose I saw that lady do? She'd make some punkin jam--had it on the table in glass jars with the tops off. The dawg got up on the table and stuck his paw into one of them. What did she do? She jest took holt of the dawg and wrung the syrup off his paw back into the jar! Then screwed the top on and set it in the pantry. I sets open the door and says to her, 'Go!' The dame went, and I fired the jars of punkin after her, two at a time. Thought I'd die laughing to see old Rachel run--with them punkin jars raining after her. She's told everywhere I'm crazy, so nobody'll come for love or money."

  "But Cissy must have someone to look after her," insisted Valancy, whose mind was centered on this aspect of the case. She did not care whether Roaring Abel had any one to cook for him or not. But her heart was wrung for Cecilia Gay.

  "Oh, she gits on. Barney Snaith always drops in when he's passing and does anything she wants done. Brings her oranges and flowers and things. There's a Christian for you. Yet that sanctimonious, sniveling parcel of St. Andrew's people wouldn't be seen on the same side of the road with him. Their dogs'll go to heaven before they do. And their minister--slick as if the cat had licked him!"

  "There are plenty of good people, both in St. Andrew's and St. George's, who would be kind to Cissy if you would behave yourself," said Valancy severely. "They're afraid to go near your place."

  "Because I'm such a sad old dog? But I don't bite--never bit any one in my life. A few loose words spilled around don't hurt anyone. And I'm not asking people to come. Don't want 'em poking and prying about. What I want is a housekeeper. If I shaved every Saturday and went to church I'd get all the housekeepers I'd want. I'd be respectable then. But what's the use of going to church when it's all settled by predestination? Tell me that, Miss."

  "Is it?" said Valancy.

  "Yes. Can't git around it nohow. Wish I could. I don't want either heaven or hell for steady. Wish a man could have 'em mixed in equal proportions."

  "Isn't that the way it is in this world?" said Valancy thoughtfully--but rather as if her thought was concerned with something else than theology.

  "No, no," boomed Abel, striking a tremendous blow on a stubborn nail. "There's too much hell here--entirely too much hell. That's why I get drunk so often. It sets you free for a little while--free from yourself--yes, by God, free from predestination. Ever try it?"

  "No, I've another way of getting free," said Valancy absently. "But about Cissy now. She must have someone to look after her."

  "What are you harping on Sis for? Seems to me you ain't bothered much about her up to now. You never even come to see her. And she used to like you so well."

  "I should have," said Valancy. "But never mind. You couldn't understand. The point is--you must have a housekeeper."

  "Where am I to get one? I can pay decent wages if I could get a decent woman. D'ye think I like old hags?"

  "Will I do?" said Valancy.

  CHAPTER 15

  "Let us be calm," said Uncle Benjamin. "Let us be perfectly calm."

  "Calm!" Mrs. Frederick wrung her hands. "How can I be calm--how could anybody be calm under such a disgrace as this?"

  "Why in the world did you let her go?" asked Uncle James.

  "Let her! How could I stop her, James? It seems she packed the big valise and sent it away with Roaring Abel when he went home after supper, while Christine and I were out in the kitchen. Then Doss herself came down with her little satchel, dressed in her green serge suit. I felt a terrible premonition. I can't tell you how it was, but I seemed to know that Doss was going to do something dreadful."

  "It's a pity you couldn't have had your premonition a little sooner," said Uncle Benjamin drily.

  "I said, 'Doss, where are you going?' and she said, 'I am going to look for my Blue Castle.'"

  "Wouldn't you think that would convince Marsh that her mind is affected?" interjected Uncle James.

  "And I said, 'Valancy, what do you mean?' And she said, 'I am going to keep house for Roaring Abel and nurse Cissy. He will pay me thirty dollars a month.' I wonder I didn't drop dead on the spot."

  "You shouldn't have let her go--you shouldn't have let her out of the house," said Uncle James. "You should have locked the door--anything--"

  "She was between me and the front door. And you can't realize how determined she was. She was like a rock. That's the strangest thing of all about her. She used to be so good and obedient, and now she's neither to hold nor bind. But I said everything I could think of to bring her to her senses. I asked her if she had no regard for her reputation. I said to her solemnly, 'Doss, when a woman's reputation is once smirched nothing can ever make it spotless again. Your character will be gone forever if you go to Roaring Abel's to wait on a bad girl like Sis Gay.' And she said, 'I don't believe Cissy was a bad girl, but I don't care if she was.' Those were her very words, 'I don't care if she was.'"

  "She has lost all sense of decency," exploded Uncle Benjamin.

  "'Cissy Gay is dying,' she said, 'and it's a shame and disgrace that she is dying in a Christian community with no one to do anything for her. Whatever she's been or done, she's a human being.'"

  "Well, you know, when it comes to that, I suppose she is," said Uncle James with the air of one making a splendid concession.

  "I asked Doss if she had no regard for appearances. She said, 'I've been keeping up appearances all my life. Now I'm going in for realities. Appearances can go hang!' Go hang!"

  "An outrageous thing!" said Uncle Benjamin violently. "An outrageous thing!"

  Which relieved his feelings, but didn't help anyone else.

  Mrs. Frederick wept. Cousin Stickles took up the refrain between her moans of despair.

  "I told her--we both told her--that Roaring Abel had certainly killed his wife in one of his drunken rages and would kill her. She laughed and said, 'I'm not afraid of Roaring Abel. He won't kill me, and he's too old for me to be afraid of his gallantries.' What did she mean? What are gallantries?"

  Mrs. Frederick saw that she must stop crying if she wanted to regain control of the conversation.

  "I said to her, 'Valancy, if you have no regard for your own reputation and your family's standing, have you none for my feelings?' She said. 'None.' Just like that, 'None!'"

  "Insane people never do have any regard for other people's feelings," said Uncle Benjamin. "That's one of the symptoms."

  "I broke out into tears then, and she said, 'Come now, Mother, be a good sport. I'm going to do an act of Christian charity, and as for the damage it will do my reputation, why, you know I haven't any matrimonial chances anyhow, so what does it matter?' And with that she turned and went out."

  "The last words I said to her," said Cousin Stickles pathetically, "were, 'Who will rub my back at nights now?' And she said--she said--but no. I cannot repeat it."

  "Nonsense," said Uncle Benjamin. "Out with it. This is no time to be squeamish."

  "She said"--Cousin Stickles' voice was little more than a whisper--"she said--'Oh, darn!'"

  "To think I should have lived to hear my daughter swearing!" sobbed Mrs. Frederick.

  "It
--it was only imitation swearing," faltered Cousin Stickles, desirous of smoothing things over now that the worst was out. But she had never told about the banister.

  "It will be only a step from that to real swearing," said Uncle James sternly.

  "The worst of this"--Mrs. Frederick hunted for a dry spot on her handkerchief--"is that everyone will know now that she is deranged. We can't keep it a secret any longer. Oh, I cannot bear it!"

  "You should have been stricter with her when she was young," said Uncle Benjamin.

  "I don't see how I could have been," said Mrs. Frederick--truthfully enough.

  "The worst feature of the case is that that Snaith scoundrel is always hanging around Roaring Abel's," said Uncle James. "I shall be thankful if nothing worse comes of this mad freak than a few weeks at Roaring Abel's. Cissy Gay can't live much longer."

  "And she didn't even take her flannel petticoat!" lamented Cousin Stickles.

  "I'll see Ambrose Marsh again about this," said Uncle Benjamin--meaning Valancy, not the flannel petticoat.

  "I'll see Lawyer Ferguson," said Uncle James.

  "Meanwhile," added Uncle Benjamin, "let us be calm."

  CHAPTER 16

  Valancy had walked out to Roaring Abel's house on the Mistawis road under a sky of purple and amber, with a queer exhilaration and expectancy in her heart. Back there, behind her, her mother and Cousin Stickles were crying--over themselves, not over her. But here the wind was in her face, soft, dew-wet, cool, blowing along the grassy roads. Oh, she loved the wind! The robins were whistling sleepily in the firs along the way and the moist air was fragrant with the tang of balsam. Big cars went purring past in the violet dusk--the stream of summer tourists to Muskoka had already begun--but Valancy did not envy any of their occupants. Muskoka cottages might be charming, but beyond, in the sunset skies, among the spires of the firs, her Blue Castle towered. She brushed the old years and habits and inhibitions away from her like dead leaves. She would not be littered with them.